Entry #5 Does Wall-E predict our future?

                Wall-E is a Disney Pixar film that takes place in a dystopian future. The film centers on a garbage compacting robot who is programed to clear the garbage on the now trashed and unlivable earth.  The human race has been forced into space and lives on a giant ship.

   

  The clip to the left is a beautiful     summation of what the movie         appears to be predicting our           future to become. After first           watching this I had thought, “Oh give me a break, we would           never  become like that.”               However,  upon watching it a second time it hit me, we already are like this. People hustling about in their chairs, talking on their screens, eating their fast food, surrounded by advertisements, stunned and paralyzed on the ground, unable to continue when it is all taken away. Do you see the parallel? The creator was virtually slapping our current social society across the face here! If this scene seems shocking to you or impossible, then I challenge you to just take a look around you.

                How often do you drive down the road while talking on your phone (through Bluetooth of course because we are safe drivers), and see a billboard (many of them are actually giant screens now) telling you to come to McD’s. You then stop, grab your slop and continue on your little chair ride around metropolis (never do you stop talking on your phone, not even to talk to the cashier at McD’s).  You then see another billboard talking about fashion or whatever it may be and then you stop into the mall to hop on that band wagon. We are constantly bombarded by advertisements and media, just as the movie has depicted.

                The movie also illustrates how helpless we are when it is taken away. John falls out of his chair and he is unable to walk. Maybe this seems a bit exaggerated, but how many of us are completely helpless without our cars? I know I am. I am unable to get to work and school, or even to go get food from the store. I might die without my car, hey it’s possible.  

                And then we have Mary. She is the one that Wall-E separates from her screen. She then appears disoriented, it would seem that she has been looking at that screen for quite a while. Now what does this remind you of? Perhaps those who can’t even stop staring into their phone while they watch a movie or eat dinner with their family? Or how about all those people who walk into water fountains or fall down staircases because they could only perish the thought of glancing away from their precious little device?

                Sadly, the dystopian future depicted in Wall-E is not predicting how we may become in the future, it’s showing us how  we already are.